Mobile Library (20 page)

“Well, I'll be damned . . .”

“Can we keep her?” Rosa said. She read out the macaw's name from the small brass sign on the wall. “Can we keep Captain?”

“I don't know,” Joe said. Bobby noticed that he had paled and put it down to a fear of birds. He'd heard a girl in his class at school claim she had a phobia because a pigeon flew close to her face as a baby.

Val noticed the damaged feathers on Captain's underside, where he had scratched himself with his beak. At the back of the enclosure a hole had been smashed through the wall, so that the macaw could fly away, if it ever wanted to. It was in the cage as a matter of choice.

“I suppose we'll have to,” she said. Rosa and Bobby embraced in cheer.

“Visitors! Visitors! Visitors!” Captain said, his head bobbing from side to side.

•  •  •

Joe finished barricading the unused doors of the house. Everywhere Bobby went he could hear the thumping of the hammer. He climbed a ladder into the attic and from there through a hole onto the roof. Still he could make out the faint pounding of metal on wood. He had presumed climbing the scaffold and leaping from the shed onto Sunny's leg would have prepared him for dealing with heights, but he'd been wrong. As the sky turned purple, he feared he'd be struck by lightning, or be close enough to thunder to then get scared to death.

He trod carefully, six steps, along the guttering, a dizzying drop beneath him (two and a half double-decker buses, his conservative estimate), recalling Sunny's tips for bravery. The tiles were wet, kissed by highland dusk, so he tied the rope around his waist to the chimney stack. From here he could see for miles around, north, east and west, across the ground, past the zoo, mountains in one direction and a moody blue sea in the other. There was no light but stars, and no voices besides Captain's in the distance, still talking to Bert, who had refused to leave her side.

Frosty wind spiked Bobby's ears, painful things to have so thoughtlessly tacked to his head in this weather. But it would be worth it. He strung together the swatches of his mother's dresses, bagged the hair and tied the lot together with twine. Then he decorated the roof as diligently as one might a Christmas tree, the strange bunting flapping, noisily slapping the slate. He saw the sweeping majesty of nature before him and knew, this time, he didn't need to pray. The land was prayer enough, miles of beauteous proof that someone must be listening.

•  •  •

Joe found a hoard of air pistols in a stand-alone cabinet and went grouse hunting in the gardens. His training as a sniper in Iraq was a time he mostly remembered for the spectacular states of boredom achievable when waiting for someone to kill.
Perhaps that was what drove the lieutenant crazy
, he thought, though he knew, deep down, that it had been the death, the danger and the loss that thronged them daily, that woke them from the deepest recesses of sleep. He quickly picked off two young birds. It felt good to shoot something, to feel anger and make a bedfellow of its much-needed release. Wasn't that why he'd come here? He picked up the carcasses and headed toward the house.

•  •  •

Dinner—grouse, tinned fruit and rice pudding before an open fireplace—was the best they'd had in weeks. Joe found a gramophone, its scratched brass neck protruding from a jumble of warped vinyl, and wired it to a battery he'd uncovered in the basement. He played records, swing numbers that convinced Bobby joy had been mechanically trapped in the plastic, and they danced. Rosa's frock puffed as Joe swiveled her around his hips, her body falling limp in his arms. Next he took Val, held her and swayed side to side, while Bobby, Rosa and Bert watched from a pudgy old sofa. Everything outside the room could have fallen away, into the molten center of the earth, and it would not have mattered. Not one of them had enjoyed this feeling previously. The perfect choreography of family.

Bobby's stomach gurgled, content. He closed his eyes.
If there is no such thing as a happy ending, then end the story now
.

Joe poured a double Scotch from a grubby bottle, surveying the fingerprints still impressed on the glass. The fumes of sickness filled his mouth, but in the fug of it he couldn't decide whether they were a result of the booze, or the question of whether these were the fingers of the person who had kept the macaw so gloriously alive. Surely not.

Another drink, and then another, just enough to drown the persistent inquisitor living inside the thick walls of his skull.

Bobby retired to his own enormous, secluded bedroom at the far end of the hall.

Rosa went to sleep in a charming room above where they had danced, the floor still warmed by the toasting of the fire. In the corner stood an exquisite handmade doll's house. Through each window scenes of everyday life were played out by wooden figurines, eating, sitting and reading. Joe was sure she would cherish it, much more than its previous owner.

Finally, Val fell asleep on the chesterfield sofa. Joe carried her, legs around his waist and head rested in the crook of his neck like an exhausted child, to the master bedroom. Decked in showy gold trim and with a purple muslin-draped four-poster freestanding in the center, it was a sight befitting the faded opulence of the manor. He laid her down on the dusty sheets, the mattress creaking, brought back to life.

“Where are you going?” Val asked. He grasped the shiny ball of the doorknob.

“To bed,” he said. She rolled aside, opening up a space just his size beside her. He twisted the ball right until it was locked.

“Visitors! Visitors!” A yellow feather floating, spinning, kissing Bobby's cheek. Above him, Captain's wings at full stretch, beating, pumping air enough to lift the bedsheets. Bobby covered his face with a pillow, fearing the macaw's sharp talons clawing off his nose. More squawking, then quiet, covers settling like snow. He peered out with one bleary eye. Captain came to rest on an outstretched arm inside a shabby black overcoat, an atlas of stains on the front. Bobby sat up quickly and then froze.

“Don't worry,” the man said, gruffly, “we're not going to hurt you, are we, Captain?” Captain clicked the black grub of her tongue, head tilting agreeably to the side. The man was tall and old, eyes set back in alcoves on the craggy cliff of his face. An unruly beard, once jet-black, now the silver of a stream's bed under fresh water, fibrously descended to midway down his chest. Bobby could tell that he had been muscular in his youth, but now his sagging breasts rose and fell when he spoke. His teeth were brown and his skin the tan of toffee pennies. Clearly the man had preferred to spend his life outdoors where possible. He looked like a part of it, a root or a trunk. Dirt collected in the deep furrows that quartered his brow. Though he moved gently side to side, there was a certain stillness to his presence, one that suited a man so allured by the totality of solitude. Bobby was surprisingly becalmed.

“My name is Baron,” he said, “what is yours?”

“Harry. Harry Potter.”

“Good.” Baron let go of the air pistol he'd been hiding, allowing it to slip deep down into his pocket. With lopsided arms he limped around the bed, looking not unlike a pirate with Captain on his shoulder.

•  •  •

It had been months since Baron had come to the east wing of the house, much preferring his room in the west wing, far easier to keep warm and containing everything he needed. Blankets. A bed. A fireplace where he could toast bread and boil water. In moments of introspection, their frequency increasing as winter set inside his knees, Baron considered the possibility of never coming into this part of the house again. As depressing an idea as that was—he'd lived his entire life there, inside this hollow heirloom—he'd resigned himself to it.
Fuck it
, he thought, with the devilish finality only a Scot could lend the words.
Let the ivy claim me too. What is death anyway? Not an ending. Death's a comma, a colon at best. Pity the poor scoundrel still alive when the full stop finally cometh.

But he was here now. That morning he had set out to feed Captain at dawn with a cluster of nuts held tight in his hand and discovered the bird to be flustered.

“Visitors! Visitors!” she had said. Baron had ambled out into the light and stood in the center of the zoo, between the cages that once kept the pumas and the jaguars apart, looking up to where the sun's first rays stroked the roof. He couldn't quite see its composite parts from that distance, the dangling bags of hair, cloth and junk that comprised Bobby's files, but he knew that whatever it was, it hadn't been there before. It was enough to convince him he'd need his air pistol, and he'd need it quick. Visitors. Visitors indeed.

•  •  •

“Baron is a funny name,” Bobby said.

“Ach, never mind that. Care to tell me what you're doing here?”

“Living here, I think.”

“Oh, you do now, do you?”

Amused but unwilling to show it, Baron opened his palm flat and let Captain choose a seed. “And where might you have come from, to be living here?”

Bobby suddenly felt very small. Perhaps it was the grandness of the building they were in, or that the man was a giant of Hagridian proportions.

“I'm a wizard living within the ordinary world of nonmagical people like yourself. I have been invited to attend a special school that will teach me how to refine my magical skills. And also to play quidditch.”

“Quid-what?”

“Quidditch. It's a sport. You fly around on broomsticks to catch the golden snitch.”

“Golden snitch?”

“I came here to practice because there is so much space. Less chance of hitting a tree.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like quite an adventure.”

“It was.”

“Especially for a little boy alone.”

Bobby pursed his lips and wished he had a spell up his sleeve.

Unused to company, particularly such young company, Baron gave Bobby a slap on the shoulder, attempting to reassure him that he'd not just dropped anybody else in trouble. After all, they were many miles away from the nearest outpost of civilization. There was no way the boy had gotten there alone, unless he had actually flown in on a broomstick, or whatever it was he had said. Baron had remained unconnected from the world for a long time, but felt pretty sure sport hadn't evolved in such stupendous bounds as the boy described.

Bobby wasn't hugely reassured by the slap, which had hurt, but he recognized Baron's kind intentions in the rambunctious gesture. All he feared now was how Joe might react to the interloper, based on previous form. He had visions of him garroting Baron, stringing him up until his feet left the floor. He knew that it was his job to calm him, like George had Lennie. For Val's sake, if no one else's.

They walked the corridors to the bedroom at the far end of the landing. Baron, wisely, Bobby thought, had agreed to let his young charge undertake the physical act of waking Joe and Val, and gave him the key that opened their bedroom door. They slept in S-shapes. Bobby saw that beneath the sheet they were naked. Joe's body, against hers, was so much hairier and bigger than his own, which was all awkward corners, a jigsaw of hip bones and ribs.

“Joe,” he said, squeezing Joe's bicep.

“Huh?” Joe, still half-asleep, licked the dryness of his lips. “What do you want?”

“I want you to not freak out.”

“To not freak out about what?” Joe opened his eyes and was quickly alert, a military response to waking that had been implanted deep within his psyche.

“Is it the police?” he asked.

“No,” Bobby said. Val groaned, reluctant to relinquish her grip on the deepest sleep she'd had in years.

“Then what?”

“There's a man here, with a beard. It's his parrot . . .”

“Actually,” Baron said, standing at the foot of the bed, Captain now balanced on his shoulder, “she's a macaw.” Joe leapt up off the mattress and onto his feet, penis dangling from the mossy darkness crowning his groin. “Rest easy,” Baron said. “How about we go and have breakfast.”

•  •  •

Bobby, Joe, Val and Rosa sat at opposite sides of a wide dining table in the west wing kitchen, apparently the only part of the entire estate still supplied with electricity. Tall stacks of newspapers lined the walls, some soaking up the ceiling's incessant dripping when it rained. In one corner an armchair buried in blankets stank of the smoke belched by an open fire, its shape scorched into the hearth. This was where Baron burned toast in a griddle, using bread he had made fresh that morning. Captain flew about the rafters. Val was amazed she'd not been killed by the smoky fug in the air.

Baron unscrewed the lid from a jam jar.

“Got strawberry. Got raspberry. Made them myself. That, I'm afraid, is your lot.” Bobby covered his toast with a combination of the two, disguising as best he could the bitter char. Val spun Baron a tale, about them camping, running out of fuel, leaving the car, being lost, finding the house, thinking it was empty.

“Which,” she said, “I guess it mostly is.”

“Aye, I suppose you're right.”

“Have you been here a long time?”

“All my life.”

“With only Captain for company?”

“Since my wife died, aye. And then the animals of course, one by one, by death or by sale. Captain is the last bird standing. Only one I never could bring myself to sell when the money ran dry.”

“No children?”

“No.”

“Do you have a television?” Joe said. He hadn't realized it, but he'd been jabbing a fork into the fleshy bulb of his thumb so hard that blood was rising to the skin.

“Me? Nah. Never. Waste of time. Don't need one. No signal up here anyhow.”

“A radio?”